Liam’s guard slipped for just an instant. Pain leaked through. “Our dad told us about that brand,” he said slowly. “He said it belonged to his family for generations. He said his mother still had hers, hidden away somewhere.”
The air around Margaret seemed to crystallize. Mothers know. Even in the deepest estrangement, even across decades of silence, a mother knows.
“Your father,” she managed, “was his name Daniel? Daniel Harrington?”
The boy’s face crumpled. “How do you know that?”
Hot tears spilled down Margaret’s cheeks, and for the first time in twenty years, she didn’t care who saw. “Because I’m his mother. And I thought I’d lost him forever.”
What followed was a revelation that tore through the city like a thunderstorm. Daniel Harrington had left home at twenty-three, defying Margaret’s wishes to marry a girl she had never approved of. Pride had built a wall between them, and when Daniel’s letters went unanswered, he stopped writing. Margaret had assumed he’d gone west, started a life, and when the years passed without a word, she’d assumed the worst—that he’d died without forgiving her. She never knew about the grandchildren.
Liam told the rest in a halting voice. Their mother had abandoned them three years earlier. Daniel had worked himself to exhaustion trying to provide, until a construction accident took him eighteen months ago. The children had been in and out of shelters ever since. Liam had become the protector, the provider, the father. They had survived on their wits and a fierce love for one another.
